Wednesday, April 06, 2011

The Magic Of Magic Slates

Whoever came up with the Magic Slate must have been a genius - or a witch.Remember the thrilling sound it made when you ripped your drawings into oblivion?Somewhere behind a black hole at the center of the universe are a billion drawings made by children around the world. I hear their ghastly moans in my dreams.Do you think it's odd that the largest Christian civilization in history encourages their offspring to dabble in the occult?I wonder what magic crayons do? Do they steal your souls? Maybe they plant tiny demons in young brains.

I haven't thought about these in years. The most recent corporate licensed incarnation I can find from a quick googling was a Toy Story 2 one. They're probably on their way out of the market entirely because they require pure imagination and nothing else.

"I hear their ghastly moans" tee-hee

Those billion erasures from all the children who ever had these live on the island of unconstructed drawings

Magic slates would eventually become frustrating to draw on after you had them for awhile. As you were drawing, it would erase a part you already drew when the film started getting crinkled. That's why I liked when Magnadoodles came out... though even they would break eventually!

So I love animation and i love the stuff that came out in the past full of character, personality and great cartoony animation. Anyways, I want to work for you if I have to work for anyone in the industry because at least you bring something different and true. I can't work for Disney....and the stuff in other studios is way too commercial and for profit but not good stuff...not creative or artistic in any way. I want to bring new cartoons out and bring pure good cartoons to the world and i think working for you for a while would help me to get there. So what do I have to do to work for you? I'll do what it takes...it might not seem like I can but I can do it and i will if you tell me what I have to do. Just please, let me know. I don't want to work for a corporate studio that doesn't actually want to give us time to make good stuff and creative stuff. Please.

Magic slates: the CTRL+Z (Undo) of their time. (but with no Redo or restore button!)

I saw that someone made a custom iPad case that made the iPad look like an Etch-A-Sketch . Probably do the same to make an iPad look like Magic Slate. Imagine the ghastly moans of all the digital drawings that have been undone/deleted.

Believe it or not, I just tried my first one.. two or three days ago when I was babysitting my friends girls.

I was amazed. lol

But when the real paper was broken out,they forced me to draw mermaids, bears, and dolphins for an entire week. I especially hate drawing dolphins now, because honestly, I've never been asked to draw something so boring in all my life.

First they demanded I draw all their portraits. So I deliberated on how to tell three roughly six-year-old girls how horribly taxing and what an inordinate amount of work it is to actually draw anything realistic but I didn't want to hurt my pride by showing them how terrible I was at caricatures. So we settled for cartoons. It was a happy decision. We had reached a compromise.

Back in the 80s the U.S. Embassy in Moscow was discovered to be thoroughly bugged with so many devices that they were unsure how to have any discussions without the Commies listening in. So the diplomats took matters into their own hands and began using magic writing tablets like these. The Congressional committee where they told this story was shown a "My Little Pony" magic tablet.